


Meeting For The First Time. Again.

by periwinklepromise



Series: MCU Kink Bingo [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Boss!Pepper, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Coffee Addict Tony Stark, Flirting, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Light Angst, LineCook!Bucky, M/M, Misunderstandings, POV Bucky Barnes, Pepper Potts Is a Good Bro, Rated M for language, Tony Stark Needs Sleep, Tony Stark is Hopeless, engineer!Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 13:46:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17899220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/periwinklepromise/pseuds/periwinklepromise
Summary: Bucky had never had anyone order a cup of whipped cream before. Or nurse three cups of coffee all at once. Or do complicated math on cheap diner napkins.If Tony wasn't so damn hot, he might have a bigger problem with it.For MCU Kink Bingo square I1: Bucky Barnes/Tony Stark





	Meeting For The First Time. Again.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the AU prompt: “you come into my 24hr diner at the oddest times bc of your weird job but you keep forgetting that we talk because you're always sleep deprived”
> 
> So of course I thought of Tony, lol

**Thursday the 24th, 10:14pm.** Tony comes in, gets a black coffee. Drinks all of it, and then leaves $2 for a $2.25 tab. 

**Saturday the 26th, 2:21am.** Tony's back, gets a black coffee and adds three sugars, buys a piece of triple chocolate pie. When Bucky mentions the last time, Tony apologizes profusely for the mistake and tips him $20. Bucky begrudgingly forgives him.

 **Thursday the 31st, 11:12am.** Tony comes back, with giant bags under his red-rimmed eyes, and seems shocked there are other customers. Sits at the high bar, orders three different plates of hashbrowns, ten minutes apart each. Tips Bucky another $20. Asks why he's always here. Bucky explains he's covering someone's shift, but he prefers the night shift so less people ask about the arm. Tony asks, “What arm?” completely genuinely, and walks out. Bucky just shakes his head and scrambles a dozen more eggs. 

**Friday the 1st, 10:48pm.** Tony comes back, camps out on the bar and then comandeers a bunch of napkins and a ballpoint pen to scribble weird equations and sketches. “What's all that?” Bucky asks, looking over. Tony replies, “Oh, it's just, ruining my life.” “How's that?” “Can't get the numbers to work,” he complains, and tosses down his pen. Bucky looks at it. “Those measurements?” “Yeah.” “Inches, meters, what?” “It's … oh fuck,” Tony grabs at the pen and starts scratching, tearing the napkin, “I switched to inches halfway through like a fucking dumbass.” “Whoa, hey, it happens. Need some coffee?” “Yes,” he insists, sounding immensely grateful, “I need some coffee.” “Coming up, toots.”

 **Sunday the 3rd, 3:17am.** Tony comes back. He gets a black coffee and an extra mug filled with whipped cream. He mixes up the mugs. He turns to Bucky, eyes confused, lips and nose covered in a circle of the cheap whipped cream, and Bucky can't help but laugh and toss a towel at him, which hits him in the face when he makes no motion to catch it himself. Bucky laughs some more, until a coworker gives him a glare, and Bucky waves his hand away and moves back to the grill, but he's still half-turned to Tony. “You need more coffee, honey bunch?” “...I think I need more whipped cream.”

*

After that, Bucky stops keeping track of when all Tony comes in. It's never a daily occurrence – and Bucky would know, with how much he works just to have an excuse to get out of the apartment – but it becomes … almost regular. And Tony always makes a point to say goodbye, even if there are a couple of times he says nothing else.

But most times, he talks Bucky's ears off. Some of his rants are about science … things, and some are weird, half-slurred ramblings about science fiction stories because apparently the writers don't take science seriously enough. But sometimes, when Tony has neglected to drink his coffee, he'll look up at Bucky with half-closed eyes and compliment him. On the food, sometimes, which is easier for Bucky to brush off, but sometimes it will be about his hair or his eyes or the way he always listens, and Bucky has to turn away to hide the warmth creeping up. 

“Has anyone told you how beautiful your eyes are?” Tony mumbles over a pre-dawn coffee.

“Yes, you, on several occasions,” Bucky reminds him.

“I have?” Tony seems surprised at the news. 

Bucky rolls his eyes and tops off his coffee. Apparently, Tony hasn't fully woken up yet.

*

Bucky has not been expecting it, when it finally happens. A Tony sighting, outside of the diner. He's wearing some sort of fancy suit, with a bright tie, and what look like matching sunglasses, even though it's not a bright day. 

Bucky actually hesitates. Tony might be busy. Looks like he's busy, talking to someone on his phone, and when Bucky approaches, it's clear that Tony is not happy – lots of angry words exchanged before he finally hangs up on whoever it is and sighs, scrubbing at his hair.

Bucky clears his throat to announce himself. “Hey, Tony, good to see ya.”

Tony raises a single eyebrow, looking at him with a ruffled disdain. If Bucky weren't taller than him by several inches, Tony would be looking down at him right now. 

Which, yes, Bucky gets a lot, being a linecook at a twenty-four hour diner, but never from Tony. “It's me. Bucky.” He pulls his hair back with one hand, like he wears it at work. “Imagine me surrounded by the color yellow? Holding a spatula?” 

Tony gives him a blank look. “Yes,” he drawls. “Of course. If you'll excuse me.” And then he stalks off, shaking his head, starting a new call on his shiny phone. 

Bucky stands, shocked. And then he shakes his head. And moves on.

*

So the next morning, when Tony stumbles in at 3:20, Bucky is understandably a little confused. Especially when Tony grins in that dopey way he does, like he's waking up early on a Sunday morning but doesn't mind. “Hey, you,” he flirts. “Can I get some coffee? And whipped cream, lots of whipped cream. But like, separate.”

Bucky preps them quickly and sets them down with a loud clack. 

“Whoa, babe, who put motor oil in your coffee?” Tony gripes.

“You,” he replies shortly, not turning away from the griddle. 

“Hey.” Tony's voice sounds a lot closer. Bucky half-turns, and sees Tony – the absolute _dickwad_ – stretched most of the way across the bar, half leaning into Bucky's space. His arms itch to shove but he doesn't. Dickwad deserving it or not, his bosses won't much care for it if he assaults a customer.

“Back off.”

“What happened to happy eyes?”

“Don't you remember?” Bucky growls. “You saw me out in public with your fancy face still on and acted like I was just _so_ beneath you. Like you're so much better than me.” He throws himself back into his work of scrambling two dozen eggs, muttering, “Eating whipped cream straight from a mug, yeah, I'm the weird one.” Then he huffs. Because dickwad deserving it or not, Bucky was raised better than this. “Fine!” He whirls around, swipes the dickwad's phone, and takes a quick video of him saying his name and number in the meanest way possible. “Watch this in the fucking morning when your head is on straight for once,” he growls out, and then he thrusts the phone back to the dickwad, whose name he refuses to say. Because he's a dickwad.

Dickwad looks a little confused, to be honest. And maybe a little upset. And even remorseful, like he's been betrayed but he doesn't understand why.

Fuck him.

But at least he leaves.

*

He comes back seven hours later, in another fancy suit and sunglasses and matching fucking necktie, cradling his phone carefully, and looking around like he's entered a fantasy world, but a cheap one, decorated all in yellow and smelling of hamburger grease.

“Excuse me, are you Bucky?” The name sounds awkward so late in the morning, like he's not used to saying it. 

“Yes, are you an asshole?” he retorts, bringing a round of plates back to dish that technically could have waited. When he returns, he's still standing there, looking a little shell-shocked.

“Do we know each other?”

“Yes.” That's all he's gonna get out of Bucky, that's final.

“I.” He pauses. “Is this like a 'I slept with you six years ago when I was still partying too hard so I don't remember you and you think I should' thing?” 

What a colossal jackass.

Dammit. “No, this is a 'You come here all the time to flirt and drink coffee and yell at equations drawn on napkins but you don't remember me and I think you should' thing.”

He tilts his head. Maybe he really is confused. “I come here? Often?”

“Yes. Generally around midnight, plus or minus a couple hours. You work some seriously odd hours, man.”

“Yes, I do,” he admits, a little dazed. He plops down at the bar, and Bucky decides to let him, since he looks a little weak on his feet. “I work just a block over, at the engineering firm.” He waves in the general direction, but it's not like Bucky knows any engineering firms, let alone ones close by.

“Listen, you getting anything?” Maybe Bucky can hurry him out.

“Yeah, I'll take a cup of coffee. And whipped cream, and I know this is weird, but can I get it -”

“In a separate cup, I know, I know.”

He freezes. “You actually do know.”

“Yeah.” Obviously.

“Like. _Really_ know me,” he stresses.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Bucky stresses back, not suppressing his eyeroll afterwards.

He seems speechless. But he drinks the coffee. Slowly. Takes a lick from his whipped cream, and **no** , Bucky wasn't watching. And then his phone goes off.

And Bucky turns back to his work. He has a job to do, dammit. And he tries not to eavesdrop, because it's not polite, and it's not like this maybe-not-a-dickwad means anything to him, of course, but when he haltingly says, “Hey, Pep, do you know if I go by that diner near the office?” Bucky maybe keeps an ear out. And when he exclaims, “ _What_ beefcake?” Bucky maybe really pays attention, and catches a soft, “Oh, _fuck me_.”

Thought it might have been going that way too, but apparently, Bucky's not very memorable.

“You're right, Pep, I've got to start actually sleeping.”

Wait, what does that mean?

“Yeah, thanks, sorry, be there soon.”

Bucky should probably scamper off to pretend he was doing something besides eavesdropping, but it's too late now! 

“Um. Listen.”

Fine, maybe he can admit he was listening. “Yeah?”

His face is as red as the cheap ketchup bottles on all the tables. “So. Apparently, when I'm totally sleep-deprived, and my boss tries to make me go home? Instead of going home sometimes, I'm just coming here and still working. And then I go back to the office and tell her all about you before passing out on my desk for three hours and resetting. So, um. Sorry. About blowing you off, and everything. I didn't mean to be rude.”

“...Thanks,” Bucky manages to say. 

“And um. Is it okay if I keep coming here? The coffee's pretty good.”

“...Sure.”

Tony perks right up, like Bucky just made his day. Bucky can't help but give a small smile back, and then Tony gets an odd look on his face. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful your eyes are?”

“I think I've heard that somewhere.”


End file.
